Delivery of small molecules, proteins, and genetic material across the cell membrane barrier and into the cytosol is a critical step for molecular biology and cell reprogramming techniques, yet efficient, non-disruptive delivery is still often a rate-limiting step.
Methods for cytosolic delivery of biomolecules are essential for a broad range of modern biological techniques, including siRNA knockouts, cell reprogramming, intracellular imaging and pharmaceutical therapeutics. Biological mechanisms are often harnessed to transfer reagents across the cell membrane barrier. Many of these methods are hampered by lysosomal degradation, cell-type specificity, low efficiency, expense, and/or toxicity concern. This has led to more physical approaches to directly breach the cell membrane, such as electroporation or micropipetting, yet these suffer from their own drawbacks. Despite significant advances in bio-active reagent development for biological procedures, effective cytosolic delivery to a significant number of cells is still often a prohibitive step. Thus there is a need to overcome these and other difficulties encountered in delivery of material across the cell membrane barrier.